Spiffy:

Iffy:

Can it be anything more than a Battlefield clone?

I remember an old cartoon from Mad magazine of a man on a ladder changing the price on a gas station sign while a man at the bottom is rushing out with an even higher price. It was funny back in the '80s when gas was creeping toward a dollar a gallon. Nowadays, with gas climbing toward four or five bucks a gallon, I've actually seen this scene in reality at my local station. Kaos Studios is clearly feeling the same pinch we all are, because they've projected the headlines of today into a nightmarish future and are building a team-based FPS around it called Frontlines: Fuel of War.

The time is the near future. The world's energy reserves are nearly depleted, and as energy prices skyrocket, the globe tumbles into a new Great Depression. In order to maintain order and control, two new superpower alliances emerge: the Western Coalition, made up of the United States and the European Union, and the Red Star Alliance of China and Russia. Players will get to join the battle as a ground pounder for either side in what's shaping up as Earth's last great trade war.

Kaos Studios is a fairly new developer located in New York City, but its personnel aren't new to gaming. The core of the development team comes from Trauma Studios, who developed the fantastically popular Desert Combat mod for the original Battlefield 1942. Other members are industry veterans who worked on the Battlefield 2 R&D team and other shooters such as F.E.A.R., Medal of Honor, and DOOM 3. As such, it's no surprise that at first glance the game looks quite similar to such team-based first-person shooters. It's clear, however, that Kaos Studios is trying to put their own unique spin on the format.

One of the key elements the dev team is focusing on is a realistic depiction of near-future military equipment. The game will sport over 60 next-generation vehicles and weapon systems that are either currently in prototype testing today, or perhaps only exist on the drawing boards of military engineers. Some of the toys players will get to use include remote-controlled drones, gun cams, advanced electronic countermeasures, and miniature unmanned reconnaissance probes.